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Brilliant all rounder for storing documents and installing games.

This is my first review with sections so hope this is ok? I saw other people doing this, much more organised.

@ About @

I bought this hard drive as an upgrade for the original one I had and as far is I can tell, it's pretty much just a simple hard drive, nothing fancy, does what it says on the tin, no fuss no frills hard drive. The papers that come with this are very straight forward and self explanatory, it isn't shipped in a box with more wrapping than needed, and it doesn't have a load of bits to put together, just fix it in and it works first time.

@ Quality @

The actual body of the hard drive isn't flimsy at all, and the internal components are all securely in place with little movement. There aren't any bits rattling around, and it feels very secure. Once in, windows can see the drive and you can open preferences to see the space and how much you have used. This particular drive likes to file itself under "D:" for some reason.

It isn't actually 160GB of space, because it has reserved a couple gig for itself it would seem, so if you intend to fill this thing up then buy a bigger one if you need exactly 160GB or more space.

This hard drive takes all files and file types, and let's you load on an unlimited file size at a time, and it can queue up files to be transferred so rather than having to wait until one file has finished transferring, click them all, move them all, and it starts on one, then the next then the next until it is finished.

@ Speed @

- A single 3 minute .WAV (Voice recording) file takes less than ten seconds to save from within a software program like audacity

- A single MP3 file takes 1-2 seconds to save

- Copying several documents at a time already on the drive takes seconds (without freezing!)

- A Document of 1000kb saves almost instantly

@ Wear and Tear @

So far so good with this hard drive, it has been in my computer for a few years now and has not broken down or gone wrong mechanically but has had a few glitches and corrupt files. It has had a real task of putting up with dust, when I opened the slot there was clumps of dust all of the components but so far so good, nothing has happened and this hasn't affected it.

I mentioned corrupt files and glitches, simply put, the corrupt files were files that didn't save properly, so without going into jargon, software errors, and file problems. I saved a few word documents and then I could not open them again because it had broken them whilst they were on the disk. This has happened multiple times and really frustrates me, which is why I recommend keeping a back up on say, a pen drive.

@ Noise @

This hard drive isn't perfectly silent, but it isn't loud either. You will hear occasional clicks and a sound like a small computer mouse clicking inside the hard drive, but it's barely audible over the fan, so you only notice the noise close up. When saving big files it does get louder and makes a really long clicking noise followed by a whirl noise. This also happens when you start up and get to the logon screen. It's perfect when you're trying to get children to sleep in the next room, with only a couple rare clicks when your system is on idle and not doing anything.

@ Overall @

All things considered, it's a good quality drive for those that need a bit of extra space, I therefore think it deserves 4 stars. In order to earn 5 stars in my opinion it would need to stop corrupting my files so often and because it reserves some valuable space for itself and isn't actually 160GB.

Whilst I would recommend this hard drive to buy for home use, I would not recommend it for storing very important documents, precious family photos or other files you can't get back, unless you back them up somewhere. Other less important files? No problem.

It's not the fastest one out there, and by today's standards it's not the biggest, but it works well for family use at home, just installing games and documents. Actual instillation process is minutes and windows does the rest.

It's a good hard drive, and well worth the money.

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A reliable, speedy HD that won't cost you the earth.

Having recently upgraded from this HD after 1 year of continued heavy use, I can honestly say I've not used a more reliable product. Samsung are always very consitant in their goods, and in the past 5 years I think I've only ever had one that I've returned as faulty.

This HD has a capcity of 160gig, with a 8Mb buffer and runs at a speed of 7200rpm, which while making it not the fastest drive out there, certainly puts it in the running for a high end low cost drive.

Overall there isnt really a great deal more I can say about this drive. It's reliable, it's a decent speed, it's quiet, it's cheap. It does everything I would ever really look for in a HD. My only criticism is that it's slightly dated now, however compared to all the plus points, thats relatively minor. I'd recommend it to anyone!

It runs almost silently and after a year of almost continual heavy use has shown no sign of developing that annoying scratchy sound that older HDs sometimes get.